Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Men's Retreat 2018


Every year, my church has a men's retreat in September.  And every year since I started going to this church, it's fallen on the same weekend as the Survivor Mud Run.  Well, that mud run appears to be no more (which is no surprise with how little work they've put into it the last two years), so that meant I was free to go this year.

The retreat was up at Thousand Pines, a Christian camp outside of Crestline.  I'd never been there, but my church goes up there for many camps, so I'd heard about it.  It was nice to finally see it.

I left work a little early on Friday to carpool up with some other men from the church.  We got there not too long before dinner was supposed to be over, but we were in time to get food and dessert.  As a church, we occupied two sides of a more recently built cabin that had our own bathroom and lots of plugs, which was great since we all had our phones plugged in every night.  Not that I used my phone for much since I had lousy reception up there.

There was the usual camp stuff.  I never did find the pool, but they have volleyball and basketball and a climbing wall and a zip line.  I tried the climbing wall, but I only made it half way up before I freaked out and climbed back down.  The zip line looked like fun, but you had to climb the wall to be able to go on it.  Naturally, an ultimate Frisbee game broke out at one point.  I started going to this church after meeting several of the men playing ultimate after all.

The messages were good, but they could have been better.  I think that was my biggest disappointment.

I'm certainly ready to go again.  I hope the mud run is truly dead or they pick a different weekend for it if it comes back.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Parental Visit

My parents came to visit over Labor Day weekend.  We weren't planning it until that week, but it was great.  And they stayed with me, something I can do now that I don't have a roommate.  Of course, that meant I had to clear out the spare room some and really clean before they came.  I'm glad they didn't completely surprise me.

The timing was perfect since I'd just discovered a leak in my kitchen facet, so Dad and I spent some time replacing it.  The old one was so corroded in place that it took a little bit to get it out, but we only ran into one hiccup getting the new one in place.  fortunately, a trip to the local hardware store found the part we needed to hook up my old supply lines to my new facet.  And it runs well.

We took care of that on Saturday after I went to a wedding at church.  Sunday, we headed down to visit family friends in Orange County.  We got to meet a new baby and spend time playing some games and just chatting, which was absolutely wonderful.  I wish we hadn't spent so much time driving, but that couldn't be helped.

Monday, we took it easy, playing games and going for walks around the condo.

As you can see, it was a great visit.